Being prepared is all in the details, not some of the time, but all of the time.

On a day to day basis it is easy to overlook some of the smaller details, that at the time—when it is important—can become crucial. Knowing your blood type could be one of those details.

What is your blood type? Many of us have probably been told this small seemingly insignificant detail but how many of us commit it to memory? But even more importantly who else knows this information if we are incapacitated and are unable to provide it.

Identifying your correct blood type in a timely manner could be the difference between life and death.

This is why it is important to not only be aware of your blood type—and share the information with your partner, spouse or children—but be able to provide these details when emergency contacts cannot be found during a time pressing situation. What can we do?

There are a number of solutions we can turn to. For serious preppers there is nothing like having contingency plans, so perhaps a few of these solutions can be employed.

For an everyday solution, a simple and less intrusive option is to either keep a medical card in your wallet or on your person with your blood type and additional details such as emergency contact information and the specifics of your family doctor.

An example of a blood type tag.

Wallets or purses, however, may not always be on us in the time of an emergency or we may forget them. The best solution for this is to keep this information on our person at all times in the form of a blood type tag. This may be as a metal tag on a neck chain or bracelet with as much or little information as you wish—but including at least your blood type. For hard-core preppers there is no other permanent solution than a tattoo. It is important to keep in mind that this information should be clear and not incorporated into other artistic impressions. A tattoo in plain clear text either near the heart or on a shoulder could be the best option.

Hard-core preppers may opt for a more permanent solution.

It is also important to be mindful of how you format the information you include. So when recording your blood type remember to use standard formatting common with your region. For example, using a common format used worldwide similar to the following: A + (POS) as the representation of blood type A Positive. By clearly indicating the ‘A’ followed by ‘+’ and ‘POS’ will help to avoid confusion or interpretation of the wrong blood type, such as A – if the ‘+’ sign becomes scratched or worn over time on a metal tag. In addition, recording the detail on both sides of a tag and on two copies of a tag will provide a number of contigentcies built into the one solution.

Another option is to attach blood type tags to footwear.

Another popular solution is the use of blood type tags on shoes or boots. These can be common for military, emergency services or serious survivalists. Keep in mind these do rely on your wearing the same shoes or boots or attaching a tag to all footwear, however, can be a good addition as a secondary solution.

But the thing to remember is, no matter what solution you choose, make sure the information you are recording is correct, by either asking your doctor, and making sure the information is clear and easy to find by someone other than yourself, even in a situation when you cannot assist.

Identifying your correct blood type in a timely manner could be the difference between life and death.

WANT the opportunity to live in peace and quiet away from the maddening crowd, completely off the grid and self-sufficient? Thinking weekender. Thinking of downsizing. Thinking of the simple life. Then think 1 Gaunt Road Glenwood and you will not be disappointed. So if it is time to relax and put your feet up and do nothing more than enjoy the good life then this is the one for you. Better be quick though as you probably are not the only one.

Quaker Barn style colourbond home located on 1.23 selectively cleared parklike acres.
The home is of steel frame construction on a cement slab with insulation.

Property operates on standalone solar. So no more power bills.
Internal fit out is fully lined, with two good size bedrooms downstairs plus open plan kitchen, dining and living area plus bathroom, waterless toilet and internal laundry
Upstairs is loft style living at its best with private front deck with views.
Gas hot water and gas cooking.
4m x 12.5m undercover verandas for all year round living.
10,000 gal x rainwater tanks.
Dam and well for the gardens.
5m x 12m shade house for the garden enthusiast and garden sheds.
Partially fenced with low maintenance gardens.
Really affordable lifestyle where there is nothing more to do but enjoy.

Contact the team at agents2go to arrange your personal inspection. You will love it.

– Disclaimer
All the above property information has been supplied to us by the Vendor. We do not accept responsibility to any person for its accuracy and do no more than pass this information on. Interested parties should make and rely upon their own enquiries in order to determine whether or not this information is in fact accurate. Intending purchasers should seek legal and accounting advice before entering into any contract of purchase.

THE Doomsday Clock is at two and a half minutes to midnight. The only other time the clock has been closer to midnight—at two minutes—was 1953 when the US decided to develop the hydrogen bomb – much more powerful than the original atomic bomb. The scientific marker of the world’s end has only been moved to the three minute mark three times in history. First in 1949 when the arms race officially started and the second time during the peak of nuclear warhead stockpiles in 1984 – when it was reported that every channel of communication had been shut down between Russia and the US. The decline of the current global climate was marked in 2015 when a shift to three minutes to midnight was made and held only 12 months later in 2016.

Since the beginning of nuclear weapon stockpiling, of the original developing countries, China is the only country to have never reduced it’s stockpile. The US and Russia have reduced their levels to about 10 per cent of peak figures however modern warheads are potentially more powerful than those during peak levels.

Late adopters Israel, India and Pakistan have also consistently increased their stockpiles while other countries reduce the number of warheads in their arsenals.

IT is inevitable that the first reaction to the mention of ‘prepping’ to a ‘non-prepper’ is that of concealed shock and judgement or blatant shock and judgement. And to be honest, fair call.

Like most things, it is human nature and built into the psychology of survival to make snap judgements based on stereotypes. It is much easier to avoid the dodgy group of people that ‘look’ like they are going to rob you and find out later that you were wrong, than to ignore the instinct, get robbed, and say “damn, I knew it”.

That is survival. But the majority of human interactions for most of us, on a day to day level, probably come down to less demanding situations. Should I move my bag on the bus to let ‘that person’ sit next to me? Did that guy just look at my boobs or simply look down because he’s shy? Will I get food poisoning from this take out? Our instincts, in modern life, generally aren’t responsible for their normal high stakes decisions of life and death.

The point is, when faced with life or death we don’t normally get to turn around a snap decision, but in modern life, we have all the time in the world to re-evaluate the first impressions we have of people, learn another point of view or understand another point of purpose.

For prepping, this impression doesn’t always mean the jittery bunkering down for the zombie apocalypse. While, for some, preparations may include navigating a new world littered with agitated great, great, great grandparents or the children’s growing collection of ex-hamsters in the backyard, there are plenty of less intrusive scenarios to consider between now and then.

How often are we prepared for your average-day, natural disaster, be it a flood, fire or famine? What about severe storms, a blackout before dinner or simply forgetting to hit the supermarket before the long weekend—God knows there won’t be much left on the store shelves on either side of any given public holiday. Who actually listens to ‘be prepared for storm season’ bulletins each year? The answer is, a prepper.

So while the normal reaction to the friend who always seems to have a two-way-radio, a can of beans or a backpack full of survival gear on a regular trip to the local cinema might be a guilt ridden cringe, just remember:

When the lights go out, you’ll be able to call on them for a BBQ or a bandage while the rest of the neighbourhood sits huddled around the cooling light of an LED torch, eating crackers and jam.

WHETHER or not “the end is nigh”, to me, prepping is not simply considering what the future may hold or taking stock of signs of a possible worst case scenario and stockpiling a few pieces of gear which may not even be close to enough or ever get used.

Perhaps for you prepping was a remedy to a fear triggered by an uncertain future, perhaps you are driven by doomsday scenarios of the big screen or television, or perhaps you simply like the extension of being prepared for the worst and hoping for the best, outdoor living, extreme camping, survivalism.

Whatever the case may be, it is important to remember to live your life.

Perhaps the end is further away than we think, or it doesn’t come in the form we envisage. If prepping is an interest to you, a source of comfort, a source of community or friendship then make your preparations, build your teams, your communities, but don’t give up on a life that has yet to come to an end.

“Don’t give up on a life that has yet to come to an end… remember to live your life.”

Instead open your eyes, see the changes we can all make. Be kind to one another, don’t foster a false humanity based on tolerance, find true acceptance of difference. We don’t all have to think the same way, don’t have to believe in faith the same way but we do all have to live together, side by side—we are all human. Because if we don’t, in a world as interconnected as the one we have created, in the end we will all fall and no amount of prepping will save us.

If the proverbial second-hand-dinner does hit the fan, be in a mental space to ban together rather than pull apart the threads of society, or at least build new communities that aren’t set on outdoing one another.

At the end of the day, the best preparation will be to avoid a collapse altogether. Fix what we already have now, not by doing what we already do, but by doing something different.

Maybe I have watched too many sci-fi movies or television shows. Or maybe it is the growing trend of our time, or looking back at history, the ongoing trend of humanity—Nostradamus, the Mayans, Isaac Newton. Whatever it is, I hope it is all in my imagination. I hope it is a prophecy that is unfulfilled.

I look at the list of not just big issues, but significant issues of our modern time and from where I stand it seems like we are facing the impending end of modern, peaceful society as we know it on so many fronts.

“We are facing the impending end of modern, peaceful society.”

Now when I say peaceful society I do not discount the suffering and pain many suffer from many situations, or the wars that continue. There are extremes in all the ages of time, ages of society, but we measure our ages with the pinnacle of successes of those times. Be it the Egyptians, Romans, Mongols, English monarchs or united states of democracy. At each time in history we measure the big picture by the successes, and perhaps we should. It creates a consistent point of measure. There will always be those in need, those with nothing and those we should give much more attention to, and we should. But to measure human progress from below or those the worst off, would also ignore the important progress and achievements we do reach.

“United states of democracy.”

There is a great gap between those who have and those who have not. The first-world compared to third-world. Yet looking back through history, the masses even within the pinnacle of society lived in conditions that were probably much closer to that of the third world of today—a lack of easy access to running water, food security, medicine or education. My point is that the big picture has been getting better for more of us, despite many more of us still struggling and suffering with as little as those from a millennia ago.

“Do we take it for granted?”

But do we take it for granted? By gaining a little for ourselves, as we better ourselves for our own lives, do we in turn stick our collective heads in the sand and fail to see the big picture?

We face the end on so many fronts. Global warming, extreme weather, climate shifts, food shortage, fuel shortage, water shortage, power shortage, loss of a sense of societal security, loss of pharmaceutical resistance to outbreaks and disease, or work shortage as the age of automation and artificial intelligence slips into a foreseeable reality. Any of these which could easily trigger a collapse of the system in our own, everyday, backyard.

Could you survive at home if, as you read this, the power went out across the nation with no possibility of it returning for several months, if not longer? How would you get to work? How would you get food, fuel, money from the bank, water? How would you protect your home, family, the small amount of supplies you have? How would you restock? How and who would you contact for help without power, without a phone network, without functioning emergency services?

Most don’t realise the reality but if you look close at the irritated driver on the road, the stressed out workers in the street, the antisocial teenagers in the school yard, the battlers flaunting the minor laws in order to survive, these are the stretches in the fabric of society. These are the clues to what the world looks like when the stitching falls out, when any one of the fronts we face turns the tide on civilisation and we all do anything we can to survive.

“What the world looks like when the stitching falls out.”

We have it in us to ban together—as we see time and again—when faced with the chaos the world throws our way. Those who fall to the bottom, we ban together from the pinnacle of society to do what we can to raise them up and it is inspiring to see. But we have never been faced, in our modern time and to this level, with the fall of the pinnacle. We live in a time of a great civilisation. But what happened when Rome fell, what happened when the Egyptians fell? Humanity lives on. But what of the man, woman or child in the moment? For them all is lost, before, in another time and place, humanity rises to a new civilisation. The next great power in line moves up the ranks.

In a civilisation, so interconnected, so interdependent, so impacting on the natural world and with such great powers to create and destroy, when we fall, will we ever rise again? Will there be anything to rise from?

Will there be anything to rise from?

So I watch and I wait—I never did before, but now I do what I can to prepare—but I hope I never have to find out.